We boarded a train out of Ürümqi late at night — we departed after midnight — and prepared ourselves for another long ride into Kazakhstan. The train wasn’t as comfortable as the one from Beijing, and it was also hot; they kept shutting the air off every time we came to a stop. We spent two nights on that train, arriving in Almaty early in the morning.
Once again, it was nothing like I’d imagined it would be. I’d read Christopher Robbins’s Apples are from Kazakhstan in preparation for the trip, so I knew it was a big city — it was the capital of Kazakhstan until 1997 — and that it would probably still have a lot of Russian influence. I just wasn’t expecting the vibe to remind me so much of Austin, TX!
We arrived at 6 a.m. when the city was just waking up. I was immediately enamored by the snowy mountain range in the background, pink in the morning sunrise. Almaty is full of greenery — Russian parks and tree-lined avenues blanket the city, explored by tourists and locals alike. Having just traveled through desert, it was an invigorating change of scenery.
Unfortunately, we were greeted with bad news when we got off the train: the schedule had changed. Instead of spending the night in Almaty like we were originally scheduled to, we were told that we’d be leaving the city at 6:00 pm that night. We were taken to our (very cute) hostel for a grand total of three hours to shower and rest up. After we got breakfast, we came back to the hostel to grab our gear and take it to the travel agency. Then we tried to squeeze as much sightseeing as we could into nine fleeting hours.
Kazakhstan is a young country; it a former Soviet territory that only gained independence in 1991. Homages to this independence are everywhere: parks, squares, streets, and monuments acknowledging the fight for independence dot the city. With the government now based in Astana, there are also many repurposed buildings in Almaty; my favorite was the former military bunker turned underground shopping mall (where, coincidentally, I was able to buy my first coffee in almost two weeks).
We visited a museum, and my favorite items there were all of the handmade textiles; the amount of work that must have gone into all that weaving and sewing was mind-boggling. Afterwards, we went up to Green Hill, a large park high above that offered a walk through a small zoo, rides and games, and even a bench featuring life-sized statues of the Beatles. On our way back down, we strolled through Panfilov Park — filled with cooing pigeons — and made our way to Zenkov Cathedral, a Russian Orthodox church that the second tallest wooden building in the world. It also has the curious distinction of having been built without using a single nail.
Before heading back to pick up our luggage and head to the train station, we stopped at the green market to pick up supplies for our train journey to Uzbekistan. This is where I was excited: Kazakhstan is where apples originated, so my goal was to find an aport apple. I had no luck in that department, so I randomly settled on a bunch of tiny apples. As I learned in China, people buy by the kilo, so I asked for the smallest possible portion (I think I ended up with half a kilo) and ended up with more than enough apples to last our train ride.
We got to the train station and tried to settle in with all our gear. As we waited for the train to depart, vendors walked through the cars selling various wares. That’s when I saw a woman toting a huge bag of beautiful apples. I don’t speak Russian, but I distinctly heard, “aport?” I jumped up tried to ask how much for one apple. She kept giving the price for a whole kilo. When she understood what I wanted, she waved her hand at me and walked away in disgust. So no aport, and the tiny apples I’d bought at the market ended up being grainy and flavorless!
My day in Almaty ended very much the same way it began: we pulled away from the city as the mountaintops were illuminated pink by the sunset. The city gave way to its more impoverished outskirts, which then gave way to wheat-colored grassy hills and watery ravines. A man on a horse stood on top of a hill and watched over his herd of sheep. Other herds grazed along the railroad and inside vast fields. Flocks of black birds dotted the treetops, settling in for the night.
There wasn’t enough time to see it all.
Abandoning the Ruins 